Business Integration for SMB - Living In Between

Business integration software today is delivered in different forms; on-premises (OP), hosted, or as a service (SaaS). Many vendors would passionately argue one delivery model over the other, making valid arguments about why one may work better than the others. When these different delivery models begin to show up in the same business, it becomes increasingly complex to share data across applications. At the end of the day, it is usually the business owner, not the software vendor, who is left to make sure the models exist in harmony.

This lack of connectivity between applications is not a new problem and the number of solutions to solve it is plenty.  But most of these required a technical expert who understood the disparate data models to "build" the integration.  That approach is acceptable for larger, more complex application environments, but what about the small business owner? It's simply not yet feasible for a business with a modest investment in software, or limited IT resources, to consider data sharing requirements in their business-critical applications. This is called living "in between".

The "in between" business is large enough to demand data sharing, but too small to afford the higher-end solutions that traditionally solve these integration problems.  "In between" businesses are precisely those that are suffering in today's world of connected technology. They are "in between" the business that is operated from a single laptop with spreadsheets and documents and the business that has a real server room and IT staff. They are caught in the market that represents too little value for most of the larger software companies to address, and too complex of a problem for their local computer nerd to solve.  They are the "S" in the SMB marketplace.

The good news for these businesses is that collectively, they have an audible voice and represent a viable market.  Smart integration vendors have started to build self-service, pre-packaged integrations that connect the different data silos in these smaller businesses.

Pervasive DataSolutions is an example of an experience integration vendor delivering these types of solutions. The DataSynch product line connects customers' business applications, like accounting applications such as QuickBooks and CRM applications such as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics CRM. DataRep products provide a conduit to businesses' SaaS master data. Pervasive DataSolutions integrated credit card applications provide an easy way to use merchant services from within common sales management applications. All of our products are designed with eliminating the pain associated with business integration software and making life "in between" a little less stressful.